The present disclosure relates to an aqueous inkjet ink comprising a colorant, more typically a carbon black pigment, stabilized by a certain block copolymer dispersant. The disclosure further relates to an ink set comprising this ink and to a method of printing with the ink set.
Inkjet printing is a non-impact printing process in which droplets of ink are deposited on a substrate, such as paper, to form the desired image. The droplets are ejected from a printhead in response to electrical signals generated by a microprocessor.
Most inkjet printers are equipped with an ink set comprising two or more different inks and are able to print black text and multicolor images. Typically, an ink set will comprise at least a cyan, magenta and yellow colored ink and a black ink (CMYK ink set).
For printing text, it is desirable for the black ink to have high optical density. For this purpose, a pigment or disperse dye is most advantageous, especially a carbon black pigment. A pigment colorant is not soluble in the ink vehicle and must be treated in order to cause it to remain dispersed and jet properly.
To affect their dispersion stability, pigments are commonly treated with dispersants, and a wide variety of such materials have been disclosed. Especially effective are block copolymer dispersants which are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,085,698, 5,519,085, 5,272,201, and 5,648,405. These patents disclose several types of diblock and triblock acrylic copolymers with amine and acidic monomers, such as N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) and methacrylic acid (MAA) monomers, incorporated in either the hydrophilic or hydrophobic block, but there is no disclosure of a block copolymer having a separate amine containing homo-block. Other copolymer dispersant examples include benzylmethacrylate (BZMA)//methacrylic acid (MAA) 13//10 block copolymer with number average molecular weight (Mn) of 2966 disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,852,075 and benzylmethacrylate (BZMA)//methacrylic acid (MAA) 13//3 block copolymer with number average molecular weight (Mn) of 2522 disclosed in U.S. patent publication US2005/0090599. Amphoteric (sometimes referred to as polyampholyte) dispersants, i.e., dispersants containing moieties capable of reacting with acidic and basic reagents, for improved dispersion stability, have also been described. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,648,405 discloses an amphoteric dispersant formed of MAA/DMAEMA/BzMA random copolymer, but fails to disclose amphoteric dispersants with block structures.
For CMYK ink sets comprising a pigment black ink, it is known to print the black ink in an adjacent relationship with one or more of the colored inks to improve the print quality of the black ink when the one or more colored ink(s) are formulated with an ingredient that destabilizes the black pigment dispersion for improved black-to-color bleed control and thus improved print quality. Such ink sets and printing method are disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,734,403 and 6,354,693, and in European Patent Publication 1,125,994 A1.
In addition, amphoteric based inks may be used with reactive inks to improve optical density and chroma.
Despite the successful inkjet inks and print methods presently available, there is still a need for, and it is an objective of this disclosure to provide, inks and methods having even better print quality and jetting reliability.